I'm curious what effect it had on the market prior to the official news release, if any.

I'm also curious if M$FT timed the news to coincide with the end of this Wave 1 considering (i) the odd time the news was released, (ii) the fact that there was no forewarning or leaks of the news (unlike the PayPal rumors), and ( iii ) the fact that it happened was right around the 340 (2080) support levels. But I'll have to take off my tin-foil hat, for now...lol.

Interestingly, Wave c of this Wave 2 spike was about 2.618 of Wave a (of this Wave 2) and, at the same time, the Wave 2 retracement was .764 of my Wave 1. These two figures coinciding seems to confirm my Wave 2 hypothesis but only time will tell since EW is only probablistic and not deterministic.